The Nightwing
by C. O. Rosette
Summary: "There is one other who has been rumored to be a follow up to the caped crusader, but he apparently disappeared at about the same time he did. There isn't very much certainty as to whether or not he ever even existed. Still, the citizens must have hope for their otherwise doomed city. Because without hope, what is anyone really fighting for, anyway?"
1. Chapter 1

Gotham is an old, industrial city on the edge of the water. It's hard to believe it was once known as a dark, desolate place where some the most menacing criminals began their lives of crime. But that was back in the days when a silent, guardian or watchful protector, a dark knight of some sort, still watched over the city.

Word is that for a while, this city-wide vigilante was the one to keep an eye on this forsaken city. He would also apparently, every once in a while frequently disappear for a some amount of time and then suddenly reappear always just in time to save the day. The longest he'd ever been gone was for about eight years after the death of one his close friends gone daft. He's long since disappeared since, and this time for longer than just eight years. It's been nearly a decade, and only a few people claim to actually have known him.

One was Alfred Pennyworth, who was said to be the butler of the knight's residential ego, Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises, but has long since passed shortly after the knight himself disappeared.

Another would be Ex-commissioner, James Gordon. He used to be an officer in Gotham. They say he worked alongside the dark knight or Batman as a close friend and ally. At least, that is what _they say,_ but Gordon himself refuses to give away any information regarding the subject, and the last person who is said to have known the bat personally is a woman by the name of Selina Kyle or the cat burglar.

After searching and searching for a new start apart from her old life of thieving and lying, Selina finally took her friend, Jennifer Robinson, and took over after Wayne as the masked vigilante that keeps watch over the city for a while. But that was nineteen years ago right after the batman disappeared forever. The cat is now about his age when his legacy ended, and while she is still has ability and strength in her bones,- and not to mention she is in way better shape than Wayne was at her age-, nobody lasts forever, and it may not be the longest time before her legacy finally ends as well. Then who will be left to rid Gotham's streets of the vermin that lurk there? Not Jen. Definitely not Gordon. Though there haven't really been any mass murderer's like the Joker since Batman, no one can really argue that Gotham's condition has really gotten any better- if by any chance, they could actually remember the bat-.

There is one other who has been rumored to be a follow up to the caped crusader, but he apparently disappeared at about the same time he did. There isn't very much certainty as to whether or not he ever even existed. Still, the citizens must have hope for their otherwise doomed city. Because without hope, what is anyone really fighting for, anyway? Though, on the flip side of things, lately there hasn't really been much to fight against, so the question hasn't exactly had to be raised exclusively. But how long would that last before they all eventually question what they believed in in the first place?

* * *

Everyone expects a killer in the streets to at least look humanoid. As symbolic a creature as the Joker was, at least he spoke a language in which the people of Gotham could understand. No one sees a literal animal when they picture a threat in Gotham. Perhaps unexpected is an advantage for something like a ravenous reptile in the sewers under a big city like Gotham. The element of surprise is a useful tool indeed, given your motivation.

Separated from the nest at birth, she was lost in a pool of predators and endangerment. Alone and confused, she was forced to learned the ropes of crocodilian life on her own and began to make her way through rivers and streams growing in strength and size, as catching her own food. But as she grew, she hungered for larger, more formidable prey, something that would match her size. Sher continued to travel downstream. Upon making her way blindly into a toxic waste dump, she was immediately covered in radioactive decay. Over time, she began to grow even more powerful and eventually even more bloodthirsty. Searching for even an even more ample food source, she was able to come upon the coast of Gotham city, and once there found a pipe hole going into the sea, and thus was enabled entrance to the sewers.

It is where she resides today, feasting on the various scrap or dead pets that people nonchalantly throw down into her hearth. She also frequently eats the sewer rodents that call this place their home as well. It isn't a bad place to live. No one tries to bother her or take her territory and a dark, damp dungeon like this is the perfect place for a big, scaly beast like her to live. But it doesn't stop the ferocious craving for a a real meal. She basks in the sound of the rushing water against the sewer walls, underneath the lid to the world above, hoping something or someone may drop down for her to nab. At this point she'll take anything. The feel of the water running against her scaly sides is somewhat soothing, and she is at peace, waiting for her next meal to come her way.

She hears a sound above her head, voices coming from the opening to the city of ungodly light and noise, "Mac, you sure it's in there?"

"Yes. I'm positive he's in the sewer. He's always running off like this. I wouldn't be surprised if the stupid cat got himself lost in those putrid pipes." Cat? She may recall consuming a small feline fairly recently...

"Well I'm not going in there, just so you know that."

"That's fine. I just need you to help me open it."

"...Okay...if you're sure..," the closed-off hole above suddenly opens up to reveal an agonizingly bright light that shoots right onto her face light an electric ray. What is this evil!? Why is it suddenly disturbing her peace? "Be careful," the voice calls again.

"I will," she hears someone else reply as they climbs down the ladder and into the sewer. She hears his feet firmly hit the ground as he jumps off the ladder and onto the walkway. Who is this cretin and why did he let the burning light into _her _domain? He will pay for this, yes, he will pay. If he gets any closer...footsteps...he is coming closer. Just wait for the second he meets the water's edge to strike. Closer and closer until she hears the footsteps stop where the walkway meets the water.

She leaps out of the water just in time to hear his petrified scream and the frantic voice from above shrieking," Max! What is it!? Who's down there!?" But Max is but a limp body now that she's sunken her razor-sharp teeth into him. Those weeks spent dwelling in the toxic waste dump have paid off well. The voice from above is now gone, probably to inform the authorities. She drags the body back into the water. Tonight, she will finally have a full meal.


	2. Chapter 2

"…and reports from local civilians all over Gotham talk of a monster lurking somewhere beneath the depths of the city," the small radio blares over the noise of the falling water within behind the enclosed, golden rims of the shower door. "Pets of all different shapes and sizes and even a few people are rumored to have gone missing, while searching for these pets in the underground network of many sewers that exist underneath Gotham. Most people who are said to have survived an encounter with this creature say that that all they could catch of it in the heat of the moment was a pair of yellow and green eyes. Gotham Animal Control forces announced that they are planning a search in which they will go down into the sewers and-."

John steps out of the shower, switches off his decade-out-of-date radio and wraps a towel around himself as steam rushes out from the sliding, glass doors. I've got to get a new radio, he thinks to himself as he begins to dry his hair.

Once he's all dry, he slips on a plain, grey t-shirt and a pair of dark jeans and walks out into the fanciful hallway of his somewhat newly inherited mansion. It's a pretty long hallway. As the young man observes his surroundings, there are at least ten doors on each side before it takes a turn into another hallway, the top of the staircase being on the same side as the bathroom.

John is still not quite sure how long it will take him to adjust to life like this, or if he ever even will. It's been nearly a year now, and a five-story mansion still seems a very empty place with no one else living there to Mr. John Robin Blake. He remembers back, way back to before he even inherited it when Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises first lived here. Sure he sort of lived alone. His family was dead, but he still had his butler Alfred, whom he grew very close to as an effect of growing up without a family, which is more than John can say that he has. All he has is a german shepherd named Pandora, and while she's better than nothing, John knows that his whole life's purpose is preferable if not vital he not form close relationships with other human beings. He made a commitment.

Still, that doesn't stop life from being extremely lonely sometimes. John lets out an exhausted sigh. Thank god the weekend is finally here. The general opinion is that people with a lot of money have everything easy and don't have to do any real work. John found out the hard way that this is not the case.

A year ago, after Batman sacrificed himself by flying his bat into a large explosion for the good of the city, Mr. Blake inherited the bat cave and has been living in Wayne's old complex ever since.

He did have some company at first from Alfred, but being as old as he was, serving the Wayne family for nearly three generations (not counting Mr. Blake), John knew it wouldn't be the longest time before the old butler would finally join Bruce's parents and be at peace. Though he had known it was coming, that still didn't stop the wave of loneliness and grief that eventually washed over John after the butler's death.

This is where Pandora comes in. Living alone in this colossal house and since he quit the police force, John had to find a new career to cover up his real career of protecting the city by fighting crime. The mortgage was not going to uphold itself, and since his former orphanage now resides literally in his own backyard, it only made sense he take a small job helping it out. As everyone hopefully already knows, Gotham isn't really the safest city in the world. In order to keep all the little boys inhabiting half his home safe from harm, John decided to brave the outback of Gotham, and making sure it doesn't come anywhere within a half-mile radius of the orphans.

Blake never really went there a whole lot before and he decided it would be good for him to know the back roads of the city if he's going to fight crime the way he would now fight. So, he went into the closest alleyway he could find, one squished behind two New York-style apartment buildings two blocks from Wayne Manor. There wasn't anyone there at the time that he visited- he was secretly grateful for that even if he thought he was prepared for anything.

The alley was dark and if he looked up he could see broken clotheslines dangling off of their respective, apartment windows, the clothespins limply hanging from each string. The ground was wet seeing the pipes running along the high walls of the thin alley gradually dripped more and more water onto it. There was a dumpster, not to mention bits of trash here and there despite it. The only sounds the former detective heard was the dripping form the pipes.

This is when he noticed a faint scuffling sound. It started off as just a noise in the distance or in the back of his mind, but soon it grew louder and louder until Blake realized this thing was only a few feet away, but he couldn't see anything beyond the darkness that faded a majority of the alleyway. Blake pinpointed the sound straight ahead of him and slowly reached for his gun, very glad he came prepared. Carefully and gradually, Blake loaded his gun and pointed it at the darkness in front of him as carefully and gradually, his stalker revealed herself in a quaint way that he would have never expected. As she presents herself, the former detective nearly pulls the trigger on big, harmless-looking, friendly eyes and black and tan fur.

John snaps out of this memory abruptly, though he's not sure exactly what it was that had him distracted. Blatantly he wonders where Pandora is at the moment. He decides to go look for her. His hair is just dry enough for him to go out, he thinks as he heads back down the stairs. At first the stairs seem to go on for eternity, as expected seeing as it is a five-story mansion. He finally reaches the bottom which had to be modified a bit after Wayne left and it had to clear room for the incoming orphans, dividing the front room with a two-way entrance taking the form of a door leading to the boys' home, and then, of course, the staircase. John snatches his black coat from back when he was a detective off the coat hanger, zips it up to the bottom of his neck, and prepares to head out the door.

Locking the front door behind him, John walks into the courtyard. He scans the adobe-styled, grapevine-flooded garden for his beloved companion. He tries calling her name, "Pandora! Pandora, where are you? Come here, girl!" But the only answer that comes back to him is a bloodcurdling scream. Alerted by the situation, John bursts through his short, steel, front gate and out onto the street like so many others are to see what the commotion is about. He walks with his neighbors, orphans gathering up behind him having heard the screech too, and brushes through the crowd of people. Amongst the chaos, there are still a few children crying along with a lot of upset and bewildered people. Blake swears he has to investigate this crime, whatever it is. He has to stop this. Some sewers are wide open, water squirting out on all sides. He doesn't know what it is, but he has to stop this.


	3. Chapter 3

This is impossible. It can't really be his job to solve this. John promised himself as well as the whole city that he would get to the bottom of this situation, but this is ridiculous.

John went to the one of his neighbors that got there before him at the scene of the crime and asked her what was going on. Her reply was, "There was another attack just about an hour ago."

"Another?" John inquired, concern creeping up on him sided with the fact that he still hadn't found his dog yet.

His neighbor looked at him suspiciously. She very closely recalled the days when he had been a detective almost as if it were yesterday but he wasn't a cop anymore so why was he asking these questions? "Didn't you hear about the first attack?"

John shook his head, "No! How many of these 'attacks' have there been?"

"Why is it you need to know so badly?" John's neighbor squinted her eyes at him. "You're not a detective anymore, you know."

John eyed her, exasperated. Everyone had that one gossipy neighbor that always had to make everything extremely difficult, "Excuse me for being the first in a long line of people who want dirt so badly to ask this question. It's not like I have a whole orphanage of children to feed or anything."

For a while, all John's neighbor could do was stand there and stare at him. John may not have been a detective anymore, but he sure was still a hothead. She sighed, "If you really feel you need to know, I'll have to tell you somewhere else where it's safe. There are too many shady faces here."

* * *

"Sewer gators," the words roll of the tongue as casually as an everyday occurrence would.

"Sewer gators?" John questions, raising his eyebrow. It doesn't seem to make sense that she would drag him all the way back to her quiet home just to relay a conspiracy that has been going on since the two of them were born. "Did someone get attacked?"

His neighbor sighs and shakes her head, "It's the same thing I told you at the scene."

John continues to eye her. He knows she's always thought he was difficult, but right now she's being the difficult one. He figures she took what he said about gossipy neighbors to heart, "Please, start from the beginning."

His neighbor looks thoughtful for a moment, then finally begins to speak, "You remember when that guy Max posted all those lost posters all over the city as well as city blog site for his cat?" John nods. "Well, he apparently saw it go into the sewer so after no sight of it for a long time, he decided to go in and look for it. He brought one of his friends with him to an open sewer plate, but his friend was to afraid to go in, so Max went in himself. His screams could be heard a mile away."

John looks thoughtful for another moment. He does recall something in the news about an attack underground but he must've brushed it off as a scam or exaggeration. Ever since he quit being a detective, he thought he lost interest in those kinds of things, or had he? "So these attacks kept on happening?"

"Well, sort of. More attacks occurred after that, but maybe not as much as you might initially think. Most of the hundred-something stories you've probably heard are most likely rumors. Actually, what just happened this morning would most likely be the biggest occurrence for a while."

"So what about this morning, and how is everyone so sure it was a sewer gator?"

"Well, it started out with the old legends. In the early nineteen-twenties, children were said to find baby alligators in the swamps outside Gotham. Apparently there were enough for every kid to own at the time. Of course, everyone knows the crocs are cute at first but will eventually outgrow their places as pets and be too much to handle, as all wild animals eventually become."

"So they flushed them down the toilet?"

"Apparently. I don't know who got the idea or how they did. I guess they thought it would be too dangerous to just throw them out in the bay, though just dropping them in the sewers seemed to have the same solution anyway. What I do know is that if the alligators' priority was to live, and every kid flushed their alligator into the same sewer, then they were bound to find each other and attempt to repopulate. They may not have known that at the time, but there must've been some sort of proof given by how quickly they caught on. Perhaps some part of the legend still remains and Gotham plumbers and exterminators possibly missed a few some complicated sewer networks underground."

"And you're sure it's some sort of gator."

"That is what everyone's saying."

"And what about this morning?"

"John, this morning, a someone who was working on the pipelines was mauled. It was all out in the open too, but the few people who saw it said it happened in such a blur. Actually, John, the carnage was still out and stinking for all to see by the time you came out to it."

"Is that why you shooed me away as quick as you did?"

"Well, no. You see, the main reason we couldn't stay was that there was this lady there too. She was asking if anyone knew you, John."

A sudden touch of alarm comes to John and he gets up from his chair, "I think I've got the information I need here. I have things I need to do now. Thanks for the inside story, Sally."

"You're not thinking of actually going down there?"

"I'm just kind of busy today. See ya."

"Bye."

John closes the door of his neighbor's house behind him, deep in thought. It's hard to contain all this new knowledge, and Pandora is still missing. He took solemn vow to protect this city and he will protect it with his life. No mindless, giant lizard is going to change that.


End file.
